Warmth in the snow
by Youngsoul
Summary: After having been missing for an entire month, Okita finally finds Tetsunosuke. Oneshot.


**I absolutely loved Peacemaker Kurogane after I watched it a couple of weeks back. I got so many story ideas for it, and this was one of them. It's really dark and heavy, so if you aren't into that you might want to avoid reading this.**

 **Warning: death-fic (sort of), dark and heavy. Can also been seen as slash or just friendship.**

* * *

Tetsunosuke had been missing for a month now.

Slowly the hope of finding him alive had died out in the hearts of the men in Shinsengumi, and the only thing they kept searching for in the snow was the small body of a murdered 15 year old.

It had, after all, been on the very night that 33 people had been cut down by a bloodthirsty ronin, that Tetsunosuke had disappeared without a trace.

The boy had carried no weapon, and although he was quick on his feet, he would have been no match for the mad-driven ronin, who was later caught and executed by the Aizu.

It was one evening after patrol that Okita found himself walking towards the edge of the town where a small forest was. He paused as he crossed a bridge and stared at the dark woods in silence. The night had almost fallen completely over him, and the air grew colder by the moment. Okita stared at his breath as it was made visible by the cold and wondered for a moment why he had even come to such place.

Then, he heard it. A child's laughter.

Okita lifted his head and tried to see where the sound had come from. The laughter soon repeated itself, and it echoed strangely through the woods. It was an unnatural sound.

The young captain stared ahead, not taking a step front or back, but held a cautious hand over his sword nevertheless. For a moment, the sound stopped and Okita had to wonder if he had just heard wrong. Perhaps Tetsunosuke's laughter was still sounding in his ears?

However, he was proven wrong when a strange glow appeared in the woods. It slowly moved closer, accompanied by the cheerful laughter. Okita had to swallow once as he tried to calm his breathing. The blue glow was nothing he had seen before.

The glow came closer and closer until Okita could see the source of the weak light. It was indeed a child. The small boy with the brightly colored, unruly hair shyly looked at Okita from behind a tree. The young man noticed that the boy was wearing nothing but a white night gown, his feet completely bare as he stood in the snow. Still, the child seemed to be in no discomfort whatsoever as he just kept smiling at the man in front of him.

Then, a realization set in. Okita could recognize the child's features, although he could swear that he had seen them on someone a bit older. "Tets-" Okita began, but the child took that moment to turn around and run away.

Okita's feet moved on their own after that. He ran into the pitch black woods, his only guide being the faint glow of the child running ahead of him. For a moment, Okita was sure he had become lost as he suddenly couldn't see anything - not even the small light - but soon, the glow was back again, as if calling him to follow. And Okita did.

Running through the snow was proving out the be a much more difficult task than the young captain had believed. His feet were turning heavy and numb, and the cold burned his throat painfully. It was when he doubted whether he could go on any longer that the child appeared in front of him again.

This time, the child was smiling brightly, and no longer seemed scared.

Okita stared at the glowing child for a moment before managing to utter the boy's name. "Tetsu-kun..."

The boy's smile turned into a grin, but he said nothing.

Okita was so full of questions that he was unable to find a place to start. He wasn't, however, even given that chance as the boy turned around once again and walked away a few steps. He then stopped and pointed at something ahead with a smile.

Okita stood and followed the child once again, this time at a slower pace than before. Okita still couldn't find a question to ask. The air around them to told him to stay quiet.

They arrived to a small lake. Okita could only see it due to strange glowing balls of light that had gathered in the air to surround the area. They reminded the young captain of fireflies in the summer, but these lights glowed stronger and bigger and in the same shade of blue the boy glowed.

The boy stood still before he pointed down at a snow-covered rock. His smile was still present on his face, although it had dimmed at some point.

Okita just stared at the boy for a moment, trying to understand what was being asked of him. "You.. want me to look there?" Okita then asked. The boy slowly nodded.

Okita walked over to the rock and crouched down in front of it. He glanced at the boy behind him to confirm that he was doing the right thing before moving to brush away the layers of snow.

To Okita's horror, it turned out that the rock wasn't a rock at all, but a corpse that had become buried in the snow.

A corpse of someone he knew. Someone he thought was standing behind him.

Okita turned around quickly to look the the glowing child once again. The boy was smiling at him. Then he spoke.

"Thank you for finding me."

Okita was unable to react for the longest moment. He just stared blankly at the apparent ghost of his friend, unable to utter a single word.

"That...can't be...all the way here? All alone?" The young captain spoke, more to himself than the child.

The child gave a slight nod. "I tried to lead him away. I ran far. It was cold," the child explained, his sentences sounding more like broken thoughts than an explanation.

Okita, however, was able to understand.

"You lured him away so you could save the others. But..." Okita looked down at the frozen body of his friend, whose eyes were lightly closed, as if he had just fallen asleep into the snow. What destroyed Okita's hopes of the boy's relatively easy passing was the deep slash that ran across the boy's chest. "He caught up to you."

The boy nodded. "Scared... cold... I'm sorry."

Okita stared at the ghost of his friend in silence, his thoughts trapped inside of his head where they tried to make sense of it all.

Once he had found some sort of clarity and was able to think of everything he was seeing rationally, rather than using his heart, Okita shook his head. "Tetsu-kun has nothing to be sorry for. I'm sorry I couldn't be here in time." How he was able to not break down right there and then, was all thanks to his past life as a cruel murderer.

The boy's mood seemed to instantly get lifted as a large smile spread on his face again. He walked to the man and held out his fist, squeezing it tight. Okita took this as a sign of the boy wanting to give him something and so he held out his hand.

The boy opened his fist, dropping something down on the waiting palm. The boy held his hand down for a moment and spoke once more. "Goodbye, Okita-san."

Then, in the next moment the small boy was gone, his body breaking into hundreds of those glowing balls that still floated around the lake.

Okita fell deeper into the snow as he kept staring at the lights in the freezing darkness. He saw his breath gathering in the air again, and at some point he was able to move again. He had unconsciously closed his fist and now felt something inside.  
He slowly brought his hand closer to his face and loosened his grip around the object inside.

The young captain's eyes widened as he saw what the boy had given to him. It was a long, beaded hairband that he had given to Tetsunosuke as a present not too long ago.

Okita rolled one of the beads in between his fingers, looking at it closely. His fingers then closed around the hairband once again as the man brought his fist to his face to lean against it.

Strained voices escaped the man as his feelings finally got the best of him.

His friend was gone and while he had died as a savior, he had been all alone in his last moments. To Okita, that fate sounded much worse than dying on a battlefield, fighting for his beliefs.

His tears fell to the ground, making small holes in the snow. His own cries sounded strange in his ears as he couldn't even recall when he had last heard them.

And just like Tetsunosuke had said - it was cold.

* * *

Okita woke up breathing heavily. It took him a moment to realize that he was laying in his bed back at the Shinsengumi headquarters, and that his cheeks felt wet.  
He had really been crying. And it was no wonder it was cold - his blanket was missing.

Okita lifted himself up to a more upright position and tried to get his head straight.

The cold in the room was real. It was winter, after all.

What had that dream been about? And how much of it was real? Had Tetsunosuke appeared in his dreams to tell him where his body is? Maybe he had come to tell him goodbye? It wasn't like Okita hadn't heard of such occurrences, but the thought seemed quite terrifying.

Okita was about to get dressed when he heard a haunting sound. The child's laughter. The young captain stopped and tore his door open to see where the sound had come from.

His breaths turned quick as he watched a boy playing in the snow, his feet bare as he only wore his night-gown. The morning light made the snow glisten, creating a completely different atmosphere around the compound than Okita had felt in the forest in his dream last night.

He saw the boy stumble and fall into the snow only to get up a moment later and laugh it off. He brushed the remnants of snow off his brilliant red hair and pointed towards a direction, shouting words that Okita was unable to focus on.

Shinpachi, Harada and Heisuke soon appeared in front of the boy and were preparing for a snow fight against him, gathering snow from the ground.

Okita could only watch in slight shock as the white balls of snow flew back and forth in the air.

Had Tetsunosuke returned? Or had he dreamed it all? Had Tetsunosuke never been gone in the first place?

"Oh, Okita-san! Good morning!" Tetsunosuke then called suddenly. Okita lifted his gaze to see the boy waving at him.

When Okita wasn't able to give the boy an answer, the curious teen ran to him.

"Okita-san, are you okay?"

It was on that moment that Okita saw the beaded hairband in Tetsunosuke's hair. He walked down in front of Tetsunosuke and reached out to touch the beads.

Tetsunosuke stood there wide-eyed as he tried to understand what was going on with the man. "O-Okita-san?"

Without answering, Okita leaned closer to the boy and pulled him into an embrace.

Tetsunosuke was alive.

Tetsunosuke didn't question the sudden display of affection, but rather just leaned into it a bit, burying his face into the man's chest.

"Okita-san, you're really warm!"

* * *

 **I couldn't end it a tragedy!**

 **That's it then. I wondered for a long time whether I should publish this at all.  
Leave a review if you wish.**


End file.
